1. Field of the Invention
The invention will broadly relate to exhaust systems and mufflers, and more particularly relate to a flapper finger valve assembly that will be used in an automotive exhaust system to define a flow path for exhaust gasses that are released under high pressure and high flow conditions.
2. Description of Related Art
It is well known in the art to use mufflers on automotive vehicles to silence exhaust noise and to control the back pressure on the power train. Generally, mufflers are stamped from typically known steel, aluminum or the like and will use multiple internal baffles and tubes to silence the exhaust noise from the power train. In prior art mufflers exhaust enters one end of a muffler and is moved through a series of baffles and tubes in the interior of the muffler, to an exhaust tube and then on to a tailpipe. The design of the baffles, the number of baffles, the holes in the baffles, and any piping within the muffler all relate to the pressure and flow conditions through the muffler and exhaust system of the automotive vehicle. The size of the prior art muffler and exhaust systems of automotive vehicles is rather large in order to accomplish the baffling and noise reduction required by the muffler systems. The size of the exhaust systems require a lot of the packaging room available on the undercarriage of the chassis system of the automotive vehicles. The tuning and control of other characteristics of the muffler also can increase the performance and other associated characteristics of the automotive vehicle depending on the design of the baffles and the amount of pressure allowed to be released and at what flow rate the pressure is released through the exhaust system. Therefore, the performance characteristics of the vehicle that are effected by the release of pressure through the exhaust system in many prior art vehicles is fixed once the exhaust system is installed. Hence, the size of the muffler had to be large to correctly tune and dampen noise as required by the exhaust muffler system.
Therefore, there is a need in the art for a low cost exhaust system that reduces the package size of the muffler for the underbody of the chassis. There also is a need for an exhaust system that can be tuned or controlled without changing the size of the muffler and the number of baffles or tubes within the muffler system.